The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
With the advent of digital video recorders (DVR) users have had more flexibility on how they record television programs. Before DVRs, users had to record television programs using a VCR. VCRs required that the user replenish the video tape in the VCR whenever the user wanted to save the programs recorded on the previous video tape.
DVRs on the other hand, do not require any changing of media by the user to operate. A DVR records television programs on a large capacity hard drive, allowing the user to record many hours of television programs. Whenever the hard drive gets full, the DVR deletes older programs to make room for newer programs.
One drawback to both VCRs and DVRs is that the entire television program is recorded. The fast-forward feature has been the user's favorite tool to skip over portions of the programs that the user is not interested in viewing. For example, users typically fast-forward through commercials because they prefer to have continuity for the program that they are watching and commercials are an interruption.
As DVR users archive programs on the DVR's hard drive, efficiently storing the programs becomes important as well as allowing users to customize their saved programs. DVRs do not have any editing capabilities to allow users to do these types of operations.